Vehicle occupant restraint retractors have heretofore been provided with an inertia sensitive pendulum or the like for moving a lockbar into engagement with a toothed ratchet plate attached to the belt reel so that the belt is locked against unwinding to restrain an occupant in the seat. It is characteristic of these retractors that the locking engagement between the lockbar and the ratchet plate teeth is effectively maintained as long as an occupant restraining load is imposed on the belt even though the inertia stimulus is terminated. When the load is removed from the belt, a slight belt rewinding rotation by the reel windup spring permits the lockbar to disengage from the ratchet plate.
It is known to use the foredescribed seat belt retractor in a seat belt system of the type having one end of the belt connected to the vehicle door so that the belt will be automatically unwound to an unrestraining position when the door is opened and rewound to the restraining position when the door is closed. It has been recognized as desirable to provide a handle or the like which is manually operable to forcibly disengage the lockbar from the ratchet plate so that the belt may be unwound from the reel to permit opening movement of the door. An example of seat belt retractors having such a lockbar release are the copending patent application Ser. No. 044,753 by Bernard J. Finn et al, filed June 1, 1979 and my copending patent application Ser. No. 093,937 filed Nov. 13, 1979.